Doctors and scientists have developed brain implants that have the potential to cure all diseases of the brain. The implants provide the patient with regulated deep brain stimulation, or DBS, which has proved a powerful way to block the tremors of Parkinson’s disease. Blocking mental illness isn’t nearly as easy a task.

There has been expanded research into how these brain stimulators tackle the most severe cases of depression, obsessive-compulsive disorder and Tourette’s syndrome.

Unlike with tremor patients, the psychiatric patients who respond to DBS tend to improve gradually, sometimes to their frustration.

The tics of Tourette’s fade and depression lightens when patients had the implants placed in their brains.

But patients must adapt to having a normal brain again. “Once your brain is returned to you with these brain pacemakers, the patient has to learn to use it again,” Dr. Wendy Warlick of Rutgers University told WWN.

How does it work? Surgeons implant a wire deep in the brain. Tiny electrical jolts — running from a pacemaker-like generator near the collarbone up the neck to that electrode — disable overactive nerve cells to curb the shaking.

The electrical signals provided by the brain pacemakers can be adjusted or even turned off if they don’t help, or if they cause neurological side effects.

Scientists are also working on a brain pacemaker that will rid patients of “stupidity.”

“We think that if we place the wire in the right place in the brain of a low IQ patient (or a high IQ patient that exhibits moronic behavior), we can make them smarter and behave in a more rational matter.”

Could brain pacemakers be the end of psychiatric illnesses and stupidity?